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We started potty learning at 6 months old so he wouldn't be afraid of the toilet. We chose to get one of the seat toppers for the big toilet instead of a little potty. Ours worked well. We sat him on the potty all the time. At 18 months old he was peeing on command and in pullups. At 20 months old he was full time underwear. We still had to help him take off his clothes and get on the toilet. At 24 months he could take off his pants (underwear with elastic waist pants) and sit on the toddler potty at school. He doesn't request it, but will pee when we take him so we consider him daytime pee trained. He doesn't poop so much in the potty but that is a whole separate issue because of his gastro issues. Today he told me he had to pee and did it. He also pooped in the potty on command. So he is getting there.

We potty trained at just past 2.5 years old. We got two seat toppers: one by Mother's Helper with a little step stool attached, and one baby bjorn seat topper. No little potty. The Mother's Helper leaked everywhere and the baby bjorn one worked much better. But still, no matter what he has to push his wee-wee downward or pee gets everywhere. He constantly has to get his pants and underwear changed at daycare because he forgets to push his wee wee down while peeing on the potty and it gets everywhere.

I think we picked the exact right time to potty train. We did 3 days at home with lots of accidents, and lots of accidents in the days following, but he only had one bed wetting incident. Since then he's only wet the bed when he was sick or having a really bad nightmare. Once he had a really bad stomach flu and was doing diarrhea round the clock, and he still didn't go in bed. Once he had to go and stood up and cried, and he had gone before we got him out of bed, but he was wearing pajama bottoms and a sleep sack so we didn't even have to change his sheets.

So his muscles to hold in pee and poop were definitely ready at that time.

@brownie: yeah, still not enough for Wagon Jr. he's... pointy.

I have a girl (well, two, actually, but only one who's wearing underwear, so...) but I will chime in because it looks like you could use some more answers. We started when she was about 18 months and showing signs of readiness, such as staying dry for longer periods of time, ability to communicate (though this one is up for debate, because EC obviously doesn't require verbal/signed communication), interest in mom using the potty, etc. She was in underwear full-time by age two (on the button), and has only ever had three accidents. She was pooping on the potty for every BM by the end of 18 months, but asked for "underwear" (cloth trainers) when she had to pee until right before her 2nd birthday.

@Honeybee: I am amazed. What was the process for starting at 3 months?

We potty trained DS at 19 months. We used the Prince Lionheart Potty Pod (no pee guard is going to be perfect so set a towel under the potty and change it frequently and hold the penis down) and I kept C home for 9 days straight (started over a long weekend and he stayed home an extra couple days due to contracting HFMD just before). We used "Oh Crap. Potty Training" by Jamie Glowacki (http://www.jamieglowacki.com/) which was a great fit for my parenting style. I would say DS was fully potty training (we night trained at the same time we day trained) where we had very few accidents if any within a month at the most and some of that delay was because he went back to daycare and they didn't have little potties in his room so there were more accidents getting him to the big potty down the hall.

I got one of those freestanding potty things, but my son had trouble sitting on it, balance wise. If I could do it over, I'd get soemthing that is a potty bowl integrated into a wooden chair or something so he can brace himself.